United Kingdom (August 8, 2023)—While the pandemic turned the touring world into a wasteland, Goth legends The Mission recently returned to the road to write the first chapter in their post-lockdown travels with a 33-date European tour. Audio gear provided by TDA Germany proved to be the crew’s tower of strength, however, as they made use of two Allen & Heath dLive S5000 consoles for FOH and monitors, along with a DM64 MixRack.
The MIssion’s audio team—Marek Komenda at FOH and Pavol ’Pogy’ Pogany in monitorworld—were joined by Thomas Neidhardt, who handled FOH duties for opening act Wires & Lights. Neidhardt noted, “Mixing on the dLive was very comfortable. The DEEP plug-ins are brilliant, and I love the analogue characteristics of the Bucket Brigade Delay. Everyone appreciated the flexibility and power of the dLive, which was indispensable for this production, as we had two complete backlines set up on stage.”
The Front-of-House engineer for Wires & Lights also took care of mixing MON Wedges from FOH for the support band, along with several IEMs: “Despite the lack of production rehearsals, by the third night, I was completely flowing through the mixes with ease, and soundcheck readiness happened very fast with this dLive configuration.”
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Komenda incorporated extra outboard gear to ensure The Mission’s iconic sound was captured. On the other hand, Neidhardt made use of onboard DEEP plug-ins, such as the Dual Threshold Expander, Dynamic EQ, and the newer Bus compressor, to pull the mix together, earning rave reviews from both the bands and the crew.
The dLive DM64 is the largest MixRack in the dLive range, providing 64 XLR mic/line inputs and 32 XLR line outputs plus three 128-channel audio networking slots. The DM64 offers 128 input processing channels and 64 mix outputs with a configurable 64-bus architecture and 0.7ms latency.
“The decision to have the dLive S5000s on this tour was definitely the right choice,” concluded the team.